Applied Digital shares rocketed 16% Friday after the data center company crushed first-quarter expectations and expanded its massive AI infrastructure deal with CoreWeave to $11 billion. The surge caps a monster year that's seen the stock climb over 350% as hyperscale demand for AI computing power reshapes the entire data center landscape.
Applied Digital just proved that being the picks and shovels of the AI gold rush pays off big time. The company's stock surged 16% Friday after posting quarterly results that show how desperate tech giants are for AI computing power - and how much they're willing to pay for it.
The numbers tell a compelling story. Applied Digital's first-quarter revenue hit $64.2 million, crushing analyst estimates of $50 million and marking an 84% jump from last year's $34.85 million. Even better, the company's loss per share came in at just 7 cents, beating expectations of a 13-cent loss. That's the kind of beat that gets Wall Street's attention.
But the real headline is what happened with CoreWeave, the AI cloud company that's become one of the hottest names in enterprise AI infrastructure. Applied Digital expanded their existing $7 billion lease agreement by adding another 150 megawatts at the company's Polaris Forge 1 campus in North Dakota. The expansion pushes the total anticipated revenue from the project to an eye-popping $11 billion.
"With hyperscalers expected to invest approximately $350 billion into AI deployment this year, we believe we are in a prime position to serve as the modern-day picks and shovels of the intelligence era," CEO Wes Cummins said in the earnings release. It's not just marketing speak - the math backs it up.
The CoreWeave deal showcases how the AI infrastructure race has created unprecedented demand for specialized data centers. CoreWeave, which started as a crypto mining operation before pivoting to AI, has become a critical partner for companies needing massive GPU clusters for training and running large language models. Their partnership with Applied Digital represents one of the largest data center lease agreements in recent memory.
Applied Digital isn't stopping there. The company secured funding from Macquarie Equipment Capital for a second campus in North Dakota called Polaris Forge 2. This $3 billion facility will house two 150-megawatt buildings, bringing total leased capacity across both campuses to 600 megawatts. For context, that's enough power to run a small city - all dedicated to AI workloads.
The timeline is aggressive but achievable. An initial 200 megawatts should come online in 2026, with full capacity reached by 2027. The company says one building at the first campus is nearly complete, with construction beginning on the second.
